MacLaren Hall was a notorious Los Angeles County child protection institution for abused, unwanted, abandoned, and neglected children. It was also used as an overflow facility for the county juvenile hall. In operation in one form or another from the 1940's until 2003, tens of thousands of children lived in the halls of Mac Hall. I was a resident of Mac Hall as an 8 year old child, in 1969, and have yet to forget what I experienced there. I have begun to collect information about the history of child protection institutions such as MacLaren Hall. I have also begun to compare and contrast the ways disenfranchised populations, especially children, have been treated by society throughout U.S. history. I have also begun to do research on Mac Hall's history and have also begun interviewing adult survivors of Mac Hall. Via my research, I am filling in many of the blanks that I, and others who lived in Mac Hall, have had about our own childhoods. By comparing other local protective custody institutions, such as Camarillo State Hospital, we are able to recognize trends of abuse. Little has been written about Mac Hall, by either historians or survivors. My goal is to break the silence, giving a voice to the children, now adults, who went through Mac Hall without a voice decades prior. I also want to document what happened at Mac Hall to try to better child protection services, and society itself, for the future.
Letter addressed to me at MacLaren Hall, from my cousin, postdated January 1969
You can read my culmination of 6 months research on the history of MacLaren Hall from the 1940's up to 1970 here, and you can also read about the history of child institutions in the United States, which is also the product of six months' of research. I have only begun to write and research into this subject in a professional manner and am currently writing an article for a historic review on the topic, as well as working on a digital archive online for MacLaren Hall history. I have spent a good portion of my time in graduate school while working on my Masters Degree on this subject matter, of Los Angeles and vicinity child institutions, United States' child institutions, and institutions on the whole, and also the history of MacLaren Hall, specifically. I feel the topic warrants more research and historical documentation since very little is in the public record about this place that housed 4,000 children a year in 1964.
I am looking for ways to help people who were in MacLaren Hall as children, myself included, heal from the tragedies and horrors they saw in these institutions. I am not a
doctor, medical specialist, or a social
worker, but I do know what I have experienced. The path to healing I transcribe below is based on experience, and nothing else. These things I have seen work for me and others, I do not recommend these
for others:
1. Get proof that you were in the institution; that has seemed to help a lot of people with this background. This involves anything from a piece of mail addressed to you as a child in Mac Hall, with a postmark, to a
relative who can serve as a witness to you going there. Somehow, there is a weird fog, perhaps due to psychiatric drugging of children, over being in these places once you are out.
Perhaps it is too much to believe it happened, but you know it happened. Getting validation, such as the purple crayon marks on the wood in the movie "Sybil," can really help on the path to
healing for some.
2. Telling your story can help. Some write it out. Some talk it out, to others, or alone into a microphone and record it. Talk and writing therapy is very effective for
survivors of institutions, and places like Mac Hall.
3. Drawing, painting, coloring, etc. the institutional setting as you remember it can be painful but helpful as there is some kind of healing in drawing it, as if you
now control it...and it also distances you from it happening, for if you are drawing it, you are not the subject, so to speak, and that can help one come to terms with the fact
that you survived, and the trauma is in the past, not the present. I, too, was frightened to draw what I saw in my nightmares regarding memories of Mac Hall. For months, I tried to
draw Mac Hall but it almost felt like if I drew them, I would bring the ghosts of it back to haunt me. But finally, I did draw the yard, with the big fence with barbed wire,
out the windows of the bedroom with the bars on the windows, and the beds in the dorm room. Yes, I cried, but I felt I had purged a demon in me, and gotten it out of me and onto the paper
finally. I cannot say this will work for everyone, but for me, it was healing to just finally draw the place from memory onto paper.
4. I felt better after I talked to others who had experienced Mac Hall. I was able to find others who had been in Mac Hall by putting essays in media and on the
internet. There is incredible healing in befriending others who *know* what you are speaking of, first-hand, in a way people who were not in Mac Hall as children cannot understand.
These are just some of the things I have found to be healing. Each finds their own path and no one can do the work for you, is all I know. It is haunting to have memories of institutions in your psyche. The echoes of children and babies screaming and crying 24/7 is how I remember Mac Hall. Children should not have seen such things. Several things bother me still about this issue, such as, much of the staff at both Camarillo State Hospital, which housed children and teens, and MacLaren Hall, still live in L.A. and Ventura Counties. Both Southern CA institutions housed children in a jail-like setting, and both institutions were known for horrific abuses of clients BY THE STAFF. It bothers me that the people who perpetrated these horrific crimes against humanity, walk free amongst us as if nothing happened. While there were staff who were decent, kind, and caring at these institutions, they also attracted pedophiles and masochists, and mentally ill and/or violent people as staff, due to the lure of unprotected children and vulnerable populations, with "unwanted" societal status, often abandoned by their own families, and left in state run, underfunded, isolation institutions. I feel there should be some tracking of these guards, nurses, etc. who grossly abused children and others who were dependent upon them, as the grand jury indictments of places like Camarillo State did not happen without such players involved. Patient abuse absolutely relies on abusive staff, and there is not a state-run institution out there, in my belief, that does not breed this type of prey and predator behavior. Much as people who were molested by Catholic priests were allowed to find some sort of peace in a response and acknowledgement of priest abuses, I feel adult survivors of state-run "child protection" institutions, like MacLaren Hall, deserve that same sort of legal remedy and that the statute of limitations in the cases of these institutional abuses, must be lifted just as it was to prosecute the priests past the SOL.
An examination room at the abandoned Camarillo Mental Hospital, Camarillo, CA, as I photographed it on January 22, 2010. Camarillo was notorious
for patient abuses. It opened in the 1930's and closed in the late 1990's. The dark lines on the wall are shadows from the bars on the windows. Institutional abuses highlight
common trends in organized abuses of the vulnerable thus it is beneficial to study Camarillo when also studying MacLaren Hall. Many doctors worked at both Mac Hall and
Camarillo State Hospital, which was notorious for over-drugging and neglecting patients to fatality. Documented in the L.A. Times are days when Camarillo would go to local
Southern CA child institutions, including Mac Hall, and take out "mentally disturbed" children, removing them to Camarillo State.
I think we need to study the history of past U.S. institutions, and actually look at the trends, ugly and horrid as that is. To learn from our mistakes, we must do that. We also need to know where all of those records from Mac Hall *went*. The County claims to have "lost" or "misplaced" them. We need to know what drugs Mac Hall put into children who as adults, now would like to know their own medical history. There is much work still to be done around the issue of MacLaren Hall, and all child protection institutions in U.S. history. Institutional history can be applied to a specific institution's history, and we see patterns of abuse, and patterns of abuse, honestly, point to remedy...we can see the patterns of abuse, now let's use that information to clean up those places that still exist now.
I am currently in the process of building this website and thus I apologize for its disorder but also encourage you to check back as I have a lot of research and resources to share and hope to get those things up on this site shortly...
THE HISTORY OF MACLAREN HALL FROM THE 1940's - 1970: Researched by K. Anderberg, using primarily Los Angeles Times archives...
MacLaren Hall in the News
There are hundreds of articles mentioning Mac Hall in the archives of the Los Angeles Times. Here are some excerpts:
- Los Angeles Times, April 26, 1959: “Construction work to prepare MacLaren Hall, former Sister Kenny Home, as a county home for juvenile girls is expected to begin soon so that facilities will be in operation by the end of this year. Bids for construction of 14 ft. high security fences and lighting will be opened… May 6…A condemnation suit for county acquisition of the property is pending in Superior Court. Because of the need for relieving overcrowded conditions at Juvenile Hall, the board approved leasing MacLaren Hall for an interim period. That will allow the county to enter the property and begin the necessary remodeling work immediately.”
- Los Angeles Times, March 30, 1961: "...the former home for polio victims…will become a "home away from home" for 148 children now being cared for in overcrowded Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles. The new occupants are dependent and neglected children from broken families who must be held temporarily in protective custody, officials said…The county is presently organizing an auxiliary of Valley residents to assist MacLaren's staff in providing recreation for the young occupants."
- Los Angeles Times, November 6, 1960: "The county purchased this," he added, "for the simple reason that there is no other place where the county could get this much bed space at so cheap a price." Most of the buildings were not up to code standards. Disterdick said the kitchen will have to be completely remodeled. The work is being done on three separate contracts as follows: Landscaping and developing of existing buildings to meet the needs of 148 wards and 100 staff employees. Installing perimeter security measures, which include flood lights and a 14 foot chain link fence, topped by five feet of wire mesh. Drilling an additional water well, and linking the facility's underground water system to the municipal water network of El Monte. The latter two commitments are completed. Among new features will be a small courtroom in one wing which will make it unnecessary for authorities to transport a child to Los Angeles for hearings, and a library. "MacLaren Hall is actually expected to enhance property values in the surrounding neighborhoods," said Kenny Kirkpatrick, director of all juvenile facilities in the county. He said homes in a new tract which recently sprang up across from the hall, are selling for $16,000. "The county is always concerned with this aspect of the operation," said Kirkpatrick. "But so far, in every instance, a facility such as this has always increased values." - Gould, Charles. (1960, November 6). New MacLaren Hall to House Juvenile Wards: Sister Kenny Polio Hospital Being Converted by Probation Department.
- Los Angeles Times, October 10, 1962: "...Mr. Holton did not stress what every citizen should know, namely, that the Probation Department is required to take care of dependent and neglected children as well as those who have been arrested. Many of these babies and children have been physically abused and require medical treatment. Top priority after building the San Fernando Valley branch Juvenile Hall will be given to the buildings at MacLaren Hall, where these unfortunate children are kept until homes can be found for them. In addition to hospital facilities, the number of beds now available there does not meet current demands...The League of Women Voters supported the bond issue of 1956. This money has been used wisely for the construction and expansion of branch juvenile facilities which are now so overcrowded that the saturation point has been reached. We are one of the richest as well as the fastest growing counties in the United States. It is shameful to allow children to sleep on the floor in any juvenile facility. Let us not confuse the issue. Let us work for the 2/3's majority to pass Proposition A. - Mrs. Robert Lord, Board of Directors, League of Women Voters of Los Angeles County
- Los Angeles Times, September 20, 1961: "The County Grand Jury will be asked today to consider first degree murder indictments against the foster parents of Carolyn Page, the 5 year old girl who died while tied to a shower as punishment. Clarence, 40, and Ruth Van Buren, 41, of 14522 Dora Drive, La Mirada, were booked on suspicion of murder on Sunday after leading Sheriff's detectives to the girl's abandoned body near La Jolla. The Van Burens, paid by the county to care for Carolyn and her younger brother and sister, said Carolyn died accidentally Aug. 13, while lashed to a shower. The couple said she apparently got her neck caught in the wire binds sometime during the 6 hours she was left tied up. They said they became panicky and discarded her body. Sheriff homicide Sgt. Claude Human will go before the criminal complaints committee of the grand jury at 9 a.m. to seek a hearing leading to an indictment. The two other Page children, Glenn, 3, and Dovie, 2, are being held in MacLaren Hall in El Monte along with the 3 month old son the Van Burens adopted last June. The Page children came under county custody in April 1960, when their natural mother slit their wrists in a murder-suicide plot." - Los Angeles Times. (1961, September 20). Murder Charge to Be Asked in Carolyn Death.
MacLaren Hall Survivor Email List
You can join the MacLaren Hall Survivors Email List/Community by going to http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/machallsurvivors.